Obama is dead wrong here

[Jamie_B]

[quote name='oldschooler' date='17 March 2010 - 10:02 PM' timestamp='1268877734' post='871314']
I already said I don't want to get into a debate over this.

I see both sides of the arguement. I think both should exist.

But seriously, you think that if Israel wasn't armed, that they wouldn't be wiped off the face of the Earth by now?

That entire region would love nothing more than for them to cease to exist.



[/quote]

We actually agree on their right to exist, but no I dont agree that Israel doent just want that alone, their expansion with these settlements tells me so. As far as the wiped off the earth stuff, I dont doubt that element exists but I do doubt that Ahmadinejad's comments were what some say they were, in fact I know they werent about "wipe them off the map" rather he was talking about the zionist regime disappearing from the pages of time. Meaning regime change, not unlike we just did in Iraq.




[quote]
The North in the Civil war.

I don't know all of the history of who we have armed and who we haven't.
And I don't think it is really important. My point was that we have armed a lot
of countries, and almost all of them have not turned their guns against us.

I do know that if you help someone, then you shouldn't expect them to turn on you.

And I do think that helping them in one instance, doesn't mean you created them either.


But whatever.
[/quote]

If we were really helping Iraq we would turn it into 3 countries where the 3 factions that have never gotten and will not likely ever get along (in our lifetime anyway) could exist. We arent doing that. We arent helping them.

We also really didnt need to get involved in the Russian/Afghan war, they couldnt win it, the land there is too harsh that they werent going to win, but we had such a hard on for stopping communism...

[CTBengalsFan]

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=693

[quote]Supporting the War Instead of the Troops
By Ron Paul

Last week, Congress debated a resolution directing the President to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan no later than the end of this year. The Constitution gives the power to declare war to the Congress, so it is clearly appropriate for Congress to assert its voice on matters of armed conflict. In recent decades, however, Congress has defaulted on this most critical duty, essentially granting successive presidents the unilateral (and clearly unconstitutional) power to begin and end wars at will. This resolution was not expected to pass; however, the ensuing debate and floor vote served some very important purposes.

First, it was important to finally have an actual floor debate on the merits and demerits of continuing our involvement in the conflict in Afghanistan. Most congressional action regarding Afghanistan has concerned continued funding for the conflict. Thus, members of Congress have cloaked their support for an increasingly unpopular war in terms of financial support of the troops. But last week’s resolution had nothing to do with funding or defunding the war, but rather dealt directly with the wisdom of an open-ended commitment of U.S. troops (and hundreds of billions of tax dollars) in Afghanistan. Members opposing the resolution had to make their case for the ongoing loss of American lives as well as the huge expenditures required for an intractable conflict.

In my opinion, this was an impossible case to make.

Supporters of the war made the same intellectually weak arguments for continuing our occupation of a nation with a long and bloody history of resisting foreign occupation. Ultimately, the war supporters in Congress prevailed in the vote on the resolution. Still, the vote was significant because it places every member of Congress on the record as supporting or not supporting the unconstitutional, costly, violent occupation of a country that never attacked us. This vote should serve as an important reminder to the American people of where their representatives really stand when it comes to policing the world, empire building, and war.

The War Powers Resolution was passed in 1973 in the aftermath of Vietnam. It was intended to prevent presidents from slipping this country so easily into unwinnable wars, wars with indistinct enemies and vague goals. Unfortunately, it has had the opposite effect by literally legalizing undeclared wars for 90 days. In the case of Afghanistan, 90 days has stretched into nearly a decade. The original purpose of the initial authorization of force -- to pursue those responsible for the attacks on September 11 -- is no longer applicable. Al Qaeda has left Afghanistan; [b]we are now pursuing the Taliban, who never attacked us. The Taliban certainly are not our friends, but the more of them we kill, the more their ranks grow and the stronger they become. Meanwhile, we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Afghanistan and accelerating our plunge toward national bankruptcy. Whose interests do we serve by continuing this exercise in futility?

Osama Bin Laden has said many times that his strategy was to bankrupt America, by forcing us into protracted fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan. The Soviet Union learned this lesson the hard way; and ultimately was forced to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan in defeat and humiliation.[/b] This same fate may await us unless we rethink our policy and resist any escalation of our military efforts in Afghanistan. Our troops should be used for defending our country, making us safer and stronger at home- not for occupying foreign nations with no real strategy or objective. [/quote]

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=679

[quote]Both the Left and Right make ideological excuses for terror

The Truth about Terrorism

In a recent commentary, I called 19th century insurrectionist Denmark Vesey a "terrorist," a term I define as someone who intentionally targets civilians to advance an objective or agenda. Vesey, who planned to murder every white person in Charleston in 1822, certainly fits this description, as does President Harry Truman, who dropped two atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. I made this exact same comparison in my column.

Liberals cursed my portrayal of Vesey, while thanking me for bringing up Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Conservatives cursed my portrayal of Truman, yet thanked me for my comments on Vesey.

Though liberals are generally thought of as bleeding hearts, I'm never surprised when they endorse terrorism. It's an easy philosophical leap for liberals, who view humanity through the lens of class, race, gender, and other collectivist identities, to justify the mass killing of people in the name of social justice or "progress."

In the early to mid-20th century, many American and European liberals were so sympathetic to socialism that they turned a blind eye to the atrocities being committed against the Soviet Union's civilian population by the Communist Party leadership. Millions died.

[b]Modern, white, guilt-driven liberals who would never think of sacrificing their own small children for any progressive cause still champion Vesey's plans to slaughter every pale-faced child in Charleston. When defending Vesey, liberals don't think about the idea of children being murdered; they only think about black liberation. Similarly, when it came to Lenin and Stalin's Russia, liberals of the past didn't think about the genocide and famine caused by these totalitarian regimes, only the idea of the workers of the world uniting. In the name of saving humanity, the Left is always prepared to sacrifice plenty of humans.[/b]

[b]Unfortunately, so are many of today's conservatives. The most common defense of Truman's decision to drop two atomic bombs is that it was done to "save American lives." But was it?

Wrote Admiral William Leahy, chief of staff to both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Truman: "It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender..." Douglas MacArthur's consultant Norman Cousins wrote: "When I asked Gen. MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb."

Dwight Eisenhower also had a similar view. He told Newsweek in 1963 that "the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."

Leahy also had this to say: "The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."

Barbarians? Dark ages? Destroying women and children as a method of waging war? These descriptions could easily apply to Al-Qaeda. Unfortunately, Leahy is describing the United States government.[/b]

Even if Leahy, MacArthur, and Eisenhower were wrong about the use of atomic weapons, describing Truman as a terrorist seems to upset conservatives most, because they subscribe to the popular narrative that the bombings were just another type of conventional warfare.

According to the thinking of mainstream conservatives, "state-sponsored terrorism" only seems to apply to Arab nations which fund terrorist individuals; state-sponsored terrorism could never be applied to a government engaging in plain, old war.

Using Truman's actions as an example, conservatives seem to say that terrorism carried out by individuals is always unwarranted, but terrorism carried out by government is warranted. In fact, it isn't even "terrorism" at all. Is there any other sphere in which conservatives, quite literally, allow their government to get away with such murder?

Reveling in the excesses of government in the form of militarism hasn't always been stock conservative thinking. As late as 1959, William F. Buckley's National Review could say the following in an editorial: "The indefensibility of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima is becoming a part of the national conservative creed."

Regardless, for the Left or Right, if the definition of terrorism is not the intentional targeting of civilians to advance an objective or agenda, then what is it? I've yet to hear a better definition.

And I don't see how that particular evil ceases to become such depending on who's doing it.[/quote]


Plenty of innocents dying in our current crusades. Totally worth it though! Those civilians' lives don't matter anyway. Because we got attacked. Once. By a group that wields no appreciable power on the world stage. Plus they're brown and have a strange religion I don't understand! So we have to kills hundreds of thousands of innocents in thousands of attacks. Have to. They hate our freedom and still want to kill all of us! Who cares that our response is hundreds of times disproportionate to what happened to us and affects more innocents than "enemies". Who cares that the blood is on our hands now?

[JohnnyUtah]

[quote name='oldschooler' date='17 March 2010 - 07:01 PM' timestamp='1268866893' post='871272']
The fatawas written or signed by Bin Laden in 1996 and 1998 said why he declared war.
He was pissed because his Country's Government, which threw his dumbass out of there,
let the U.S. military set up base there. We didn't invade them. We didn't take them over.
He was also pissed because we support Israel. But again, he ignores the aid we give to
the Palestinians and to Egypt, Jordan, and other Muslim countries.
[/quote]

Why exactly do you think Bin Laden has a problem with American troops being stationed in Saudi Arabia? Even if you ignore the religious implications, maybe it's because he realizes what is actually going on over there as opposed to the majority of Americans who are completely clueless. It's how empires have been operating for thousands of years and it's nothing more than a protection racket. We provide the ruling elite in Saudi Arabia with the protection of our military and in return they allow us to keep bases there, give us access to oil which we can buy for pieces of paper we print, and they continue to price their oil to the rest of the world in US dollars (which helps secure the dollars status as the world's reserve currency). Meanwhile, who do you think the rulers of Saudi Arabia care about more, their citizens or the opinion of the United States?

Also, do you really think Bin Laden would give us any credit for aid sent to a country like Egypt? That country has basically been ruled by a dictator for the last 29 years Bin Laden has called for him to be overthrown. The only reason they get money from us is because they "play ball" with Washington.

[|Bunghole|]

[quote name='oldschooler' date='17 March 2010 - 03:32 PM' timestamp='1268854349' post='871227']


And Bin Laden got pissed because the infidels were in his holy land.
But infidels from 34 other Countries were also there. [b]How come their
embassies, ships and homeland was not attacked? [/b]


[/quote]

Well, the Madrid and London bombings immediately spring to mind. Heck, the Spaniards pulled their troops out of the coalition as a result after that happened to them.